Welcome to the Department of Behavioral Sciences

The Department of Behavioral Sciences offers students a broad-based liberal education, enabling them to function effectively in a world of rapid change, in careers in such fields as government, business, mental health, hospitality and tourism, health and fitness, child care, or social services. The department provides students with skills and strategies to understand individual and group behavior, to learn how to relate well to others, and to understand the relationships between social problems and the social environment.

As one of the most diverse academic units on campus, the department offers courses in a variety of disciplines concerned with human behavior: anthropology; child care; human development and family studies; consumer and family sciences; hospitality and tourism management; psychology; sociology; criminal justice; gerontology; and nutrition, fitness and health (HTM). Certificates, associate and baccalaureate degrees and a master's degree level plan of study are offered by the department. Some transfer programs to Purdue West Lafayette are also available. Certificates articulate into associate degrees, and associate degrees fully articulate into bachelors' degrees.

Internships are offered in the graduate program in marriage and family therapy in an on-campus clinic and in an off-campus human services agency; a two-semester practicum experience is required in the gerontology, early childhood development, and fitness management programs. A one-semester field experience is required in psychology; hospitality and tourism management; nutrition, fitness and health; and criminal justice. Such experiences provide practical experience under supervision and allow first-hand experience and observation of various institutions' responses to humans and their needs.

The campus Child Center serves as a laboratory for the early childhood development program. The psychology laboratory is a computer-assisted student laboratory which allows students to engage in simulated experiments and analysis of data from classroom experimental projects. In the HTM laboratories, students are introduced to state-of-the-art computer software used in the hospitality industry and operational foods/restaurant facilities. The Total Fitness Center has the latest equipment for fitness majors.